Chapter 4 - What Nora Already Knew
The next morning Ryan did something Vivian didn’t expect.
He went to see Nora.
She had not returned to the penthouse. Instead she had gone to her cousin’s apartment on the Upper West Side, where the bruise at the edge of her cheekbone had darkened faintly from red to pink. She opened the door herself, saw Ryan standing there in yesterday’s clothes, and almost shut it again.
He put a hand out. “Please.”
Nora stared at him for a long second, then stepped aside.
The apartment was small, warm, and painfully ordinary compared to the glass-and-stone life she had left behind twelve hours earlier. Ryan stood awkwardly in the middle of the room like a man who had no idea how to apologize for the scale of what he had done.
Finally he said, “The camera file got corrupted.”
Nora laughed once, bitterly. “Convenient.”
“It backs up remotely. We’re waiting on the archive.”
Nora said nothing.
Ryan forced himself to meet her eyes. “Why did you tell me to keep Vivian away from Caleb?”
“Because she hates him.”
Ryan’s face changed.
“She’s never bonded with him,” Nora said. “That’s different.”
“No.” Nora’s voice sharpened. “It isn’t.”
She sat down slowly on the edge of the sofa and looked at her hands. “The first time she lost her temper with him, he was crying because you were late getting home. I came into the nursery and found her standing over the crib telling him he had ruined everything.”
Ryan went still.
“She said she was joking when she saw me. Then she told me not to repeat private family moments.”
Nora lifted her gaze to him. “After that, it was little things. She’d unbuckle the high chair tray and blame me. She’d leave his bottle too warm and say I heated it badly. She kept telling you I was too attached, too emotional, too dependent on this job. But the truth is she wanted me gone because I was always there.”
Ryan heard the words, but what lodged deepest was that phrase.
Because I was always there.
“You never told me this.”
Nora’s expression changed into something like exhausted disbelief. “Would you have listened?”
Ryan didn’t answer.
Because they both knew the truth.
Probably not.
Nora stood again and walked to the window. “I stayed because Caleb doesn’t talk yet. He can’t tell anyone what happens when he’s scared. He can only cry, and she hates when he cries. So yes, I stayed.”
Ryan looked stricken.
Then Nora turned back to him and said the one thing he would think about for the rest of the day.
“I don’t need you to trust me, Ryan. I need you to protect your son.”
That afternoon, while Ryan was still trying to decide whether shame or fear felt worse, Martin from security called again.
The rooftop archive had been found.
But that wasn’t the only thing.
There was also a system log showing that three weeks earlier, Vivian had submitted a maintenance request asking whether the rooftop camera could be temporarily disabled for “privacy during family entertaining.”
May you like
The request had been denied.
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